SEO for Beginners: The Ultimate SEO Guide 2021 | SEO Guide

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3. I N D E X 2 SEO in 2021: What You Need to Know 1 5 Top SEO Success Factors You Should Know 2 11 Essential Elements for a Successful SEO Strategy 3 16 Authority, Relevance, and Trust The ART of SEO 4 21 About Tracking Google Algorithm Updates 5 27 Top SEO Ranking Signals to Watch Out For in 2021 6 34 SEO Keyword Research How to Do it Right 7 40 How To Communicate your SEO Strategy in 2021 8 10 Must-Have Elements to Effectively Optimize Your Content 45 9 52 SEO and User Experience an Effective Combo To Capture the Top Spot on SERPs 10 57 How to Get Started with Local SEO Helpful Tips for Beginners 11 64 Things You Need to Know About Mobile SEO 12 74 Top 8 KPIs to Track for SEO Success

4. SEO Success Factors You Should Top Know The world of search engine optimisation (SEO) changes fast and furiously. From constant algorithm updates to new trends arriving on the scene to SEO best practices, what was relevant yesterday, may not matter today. This is why, in order to keep up your SEO game strong, you need to stay on top of the hottest trends, tactics and topics. Planning an SEO strategyor revampingyour existing one before a brand new year starts has many advantages. It helps you keep up with the industry, measure your progress against metrics that matter, and thus, increase your ROI from SEO efforts. If you’re thinking “Is SEO important in 2021?” Well, it is. In fact, research by BrightEdge shows organic search is the top factor which is driving web traffic for most industry sectors and is a critical contributor to revenue. That said, many significant changes are on the horizon for 2021 and the first Page2 thing should be to learn how to navigate the competitive SERP landscape. The

5. SEO Success Factors You Should Top Know impetus behind the industry’s changing dynamics remains Google’s laser focus on customer experience. Here are some latest trends that you should be mindful of when planning your SEO strategy for 2021. 1.Core Web Vitals update The biggest talking point in the SEO world right now, released in May 2020, and set for launch in 2021, it will be the new ‘page experience’ signal. Mixing user experience to evaluate the overall experience that a web page delivers. An overwhelming number of tools, platforms, and metrics are present to measure and report on performance. This abundance is sometimes challenging and at times contradictory. This update aims to simplify the landscape as it directs sites to focus on metrics that matter, i.e. the Core Web Vitals. These are a set of metrics currently set to focus on speed, responsiveness or interactivity, and visual stability. Google plans to upgrade metrics based on evolving customer expectations and technologies. 2.Get ready to E-A-T Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness or E-A-T as a ranking factor has been prioritized in Google’s latest algorithm updates. This is an important factor to know if you’ve been wondering “How do I optimize my SEO content?” These crucial parameters indicate the quality and ingenuity of your main website content and in turn will decide on improving or degrading a site’s organic ranking. An understanding of the human search evaluators, quality raters, crawlers Page3 evaluating backlinks, and other nuances present in the websites that rank high

6. SEO Success Factors You Should Top Know on the E-A-T rating can arm your content too. The Google’s Search Quality Rating Guidelines provides some pertinent examples. 3.NLP behind the intent semantics If you’re interested to know how search behaviour is changing, you must pay attention to how NLP is evolving. Natural Language Processing or NLP analyses search queries based on the context of the keywords. The intent behind a keyword is approached and a broader query-matching with semantically- related search terms means an enhanced user experience. Hence, not exact match phrases but conversational voice and tone will matter in rankings. The widespread use of voice search, and updates like Hummingbird are upgrading search ranking where technologies aren’t limited to keyword search. [What to know how to optimize keywords for SEO? SEO creates an improved user experience, and Google is driven to improve it. Ranking factors will be subject to more rigorous testing come 2021. This guide will help you to align with the best practices and future-proof your search engine optimisation strategies. The goal is to provide a unified guidance and an emphasis on the evolved algorithms that can make or break the user experience, and hence, the ranking. Interested to learn more about what are the most important elements of SEO? How SEO works step by step? We have covered it all in this ultimate SEO guide. Our SEO experts at Sun Media Marketing not only provide you with practical guidance but also solid strategies and implementations to derive the best value from SEO and digital marketing. Page4

7. SEO Success Factors You Should Top Know Acing the SEO ranking requires knowledge, skill, and a lot of work. You have to be in the know of basics as well as the latest developments so that your page doesn’t get lost in a dark corner of the internet. Because SEO is evolving into an intelligent discipline that requires constant upgrade of tools and strategies, you must keep abreast of what’s latest in the SEO scene. For example what are the most important elements of SEO, what are the new SEO best practices, how search behaviour is changing, and so on. With every New Year, a new set of algorithms present new challenges in SEO relevance and ranking. Therefore, you must refresh your knowledge about which SEO tactics to focus which tactics could work for you, and which ones are no longer relevant. Page5

8. SEO Success Factors You Should Top Know 1.How SEO works step by step? To begin with, you must know the SEO concepts for beginners. These are SEO basics. For instance, the following steps are a key to develop and implement any SEO plan. •Create a list of keywords •Analyse competitor sites on Google’s first page •Conduct keyword research •Optimise for on-page SEO •Optimise for search intent using long-tail keywords •Create optimised and relevant content •Link building •Track progress and make changes But, knowing these basics aren’t enough to get you ranked higher than the competition. The optimisation techniques that worked last year won’t produce results ahead, and therefore, you need to constantly change your SEO efforts. 2.What are the SEO success factors? Of course, the 200 ranking factors used by Google is a treat but this article will help you concentrate on the best. These will help to drive more organic traffic, improve search engine rankings, and hence, are absolutely necessary to know right now. a.Certified and accessible The right kind of URL as the starting point is a no brainer. It may be a lightweight ranking factor but remember that a lot of users would bypass a Page6

9. SEO Success Factors You Should Top Know website that isn’t SSL security enabled. HTTPS makes your site accessible to Google’s bots to easily reach, crawl, and index. b.Remove the speed killers Data shows that 40% of visitors abandon a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load, and 80% of visitors never even return to it. Even top quality content and a professional website design cannot redeem slow speeds. Bounce rate, conversion, page views, reader satisfaction, search ranking, and revenue rely on faster speed. Therefore, declutter all non-essential widgets. Mobile page speed algorithm update penalises slow loading pages on mobile devices. According to Strange Loop, a mere 1-second delay in page load time can mean a 7% loss in conversions and 11% fewer page views! c.Be friends with the mobile The mobile usage statistics have shown the steady increase in traffic and page views from mobile devices. Accordingly, Google—obsessed as they are with the best in user experience, have rolled out their mobile-first index. This means that mobile-optimized sites rank higher than desktop-geared ones. Google AMP can help in this regard. Page7 Below image shows the Mobile Friendly Test Result from Woorank

10. SEO Success Factors You Should Top Know d.Content marketing is still king Valuable content in the form of engaging and popular topics can attract traffic. Understand the metrics behind keyword targeting, and capitalise on the long- tail keyword research. Keywords are important for search bots but remember that your site needs to have content for people to read and then engage with. While you are creating pages optimised to attract organic search traffic, do not forget to align your content with the ‘search intent’. e.Linking both ways Link building to other sites that are authoritative and relevant sure leads traffic away from your site but it is crucial and a smart search engine optimisation strategy. Build trust and in turn receive inbound links from influencers and quality sites. A healthy combination of dofollow and nofollow links provide a natural link profile that is rewarded in search engine rankings. Page8

11. SEO Success Factors You Should Top Know f.Meta titles and descriptions Search engines use meta titles to show pages in search results, creating a compelling one is a great opportunity to attract users. Well-crafted and unique titles and descriptions being the first section that people see when Google serves up a page to search users makes organic traffic viable. On the other hand, meta descriptions help in the click-through rate. Truncation is one concern in this arena and can be avoided by using the SERP pixel tool. g.Don’t dehumanise the URLs A meaningful URL is easier to read for a human as well as search engines. Search spiders are programs and accordingly are following search users and also need to be guided. Ideally, a URL should be readable and not be just numbers and characters; be memorable to users; not more than four words long; and search engine-friendly. h.Domain age Did you know that very few sites receive top ten Google search ranking if they have pages more than a year old? An Ahrefs study of two million pages found that 95% of newly published pages don’t get to the top ten within a year but 5.7% do manage to get there in about 2–6 months. How? A lot of hard work Page9 guided by some solid knowledge of SEO. Remember to publish unique content

12. SEO Success Factors You Should Top Know consistently to improve your rankings. This article can be a starting point to get your page among the 5.7% i.Keyword the images An entire search section dedicated to images is proof enough for the importance for images. And images are searched with—keywords! Thus, inserting keywords in image names and captions can go a long way in improving search rankings. Think about relevance here rather than creativity, and of course, steer clear of keyword stuffing. j.Social Signals Social media shares are important but not yet in the algorithm ranking factors according to Google. However, many case studies conducted have shown that social shares, likes, tweets, and pins do have an impact on search engine ranking. In a way, social shares increase traffic in a page by itself, and also is sure to build more backlinks. Hence, an indirect improvement in search engine rankings. Make content accessible in social media, easy to share, and then amplify these social signals to boost your brand in social media. The SEO success factors listed above will keep both Google and your audience happy. The predicament is never about sacrificing one for the other. Create a user experience that your audience will love and then optimise it for Google to understand and rank well. Page10

13. Essential Elements for a Successful SEO Strategy Developing an SEO plan that will attract qualified traffic to a website and boost conversions is both a technical and creative effort of interconnected elements. If you’re planning to employ SEO for your business, your top concerns probably are: •how will more customers find your business online when they need to? •how to stand out among scores of online competitors? •how to employ tactics that will let you stay on the top results in the page? •how to earn more returns from your SEO efforts? These are all pertinent questions that should be answered by a comprehensive and thorough SEO strategy. Technical SEO knowledge, analytical expertise, a defined keyword map and a solid content marketing strategy require both experience and expertise. It will decide the success of your business’ presence in the first page of the search engine, preferably among the top three results. Page11

14. Essential Elements for a Successful SEO Strategy 1.What Is an SEO Strategy? No one wants to see their site dead and buried in some obscure corner of Google SERPs. What should you do then? Create an effective SEO strategy that will utilise every page and link of your website. 2.How to create an effective SEO strategy that keeps your business website visible to users when they need it? Every SEO strategy begins with the first elementary step: An SEO Audit. Find out the avenues that need improvement before you set to build up an SEO strategy. You need to know the present standing so that you can measure the successes of your SEO rankings. Make sure that all technical SEO set-up and indexing strategies are in order so that your site can be crawled and indexed by Google efficiently. Thinkprogramming, it makes for better SEO. Next, plan an outcome-oriented strategy including these five essential elements underlined below. 3.Optimise to Google’s Algorithm Updates The natural language processing updates along with AI incorporation in search content delivery has upped the user experience game. Google’s latest updates like the Hummingbird, Rank Brain, BERT are user-focused. Now, the SERP Page12 landscape has moved on to intent matching rather than keyword string matching.

15. Essential Elements for a Successful SEO Strategy Experts like Kelly Stanze and Eli Schwartz agree that the SEO strategy should now focus on user intent and clear architecture of content. At the end, a strategy based on content enhances engagement and produces results through social proof in positive reviews. 4.Choice of Keyword Strategy Long tail, short tail, local—keywords are an essential part of your SEO strategy. Hitting the bull’s eye requires finding the winning combination between search term volume and search term competitiveness. A competitor’s keyword analysis will clarify the odds stacked against you. Why not target keywords with a reasonable volume but less competition rather than keywords with the highest volume? Websites onthe first page of Google receive 95% traffic, therefore chances are better for a less popular term on the first page. Refine your target audience by settling on the perfect keywords. 5.Make Content Good to E-A-T Relevant, high-quality, and optimised content affects a lot of SEO strategizing elements such as link building, site structure, and social shares possibility. Of course, you should write for the audience and when they like it, they will take it to places. However, Google has its own high-quality content requirements based on Expertise, Authority, Trust or the E-A-T attributes. Credentials defined by structured data mark-up and any fact-oriented schema are ways that Google will weigh your content credibility and in turn, your ranking. Page13

16. Essential Elements for a Successful SEO Strategy 6.Entity and Knowledge Graph Optimisation Knowledge graph panels with prime visibility without clicking have changed the search dynamics. Gearing up for this entity and fact-based information to derive the real-world connections will boost your SEO rankings. Remember, local search is entity-based, and with quality content that caters to users and crawlers alike will sendentity-related signals that are going to help you keep ranking. Below image shows how knowledge appears on SERP. 7.Search the Visual Way Explicit image alt tags, structured data like price and availability, schema markup—they have all boosted the image search among users. Data shows that one-third of searches in Google is carried out through images. As a result, quality images of graphs, data, stats are earning powerful backlinks and hence, rankings. In fact, for e-commerce businesses Google Lens has made image optimisation an important part of SEO strategy. Page14

17. Essential Elements for a Successful SEO Strategy All of these elements are an important part of a comprehensive strategy. It will be effective in making categorical and encouraging contacts with your target audience online. SEO elevates your chances to be an organic top ranker better than paid channels. Along with this, your website’s potential actions should be optimised to create a customer-friendly, frictionless user experience which will be valued by your visitors and by Google. Page15

18. Authority, Relevance, and Trust-The ART of SEO Art requires skill, and SEO is all about honing your skills to perfection. Each website is unique, catering to a different audience, providing a different product or service, requiring a different set of actions and initiatives. The art of SEO therefore has subjective interpretation and treatment. In other words, knowledge, expertise, and experience can bring on the ‘A’ game in the SEO landscape where: Knowledge - Studying about coding, design, server architecture Expertise - Identifying page ranking trends, intuition about user behaviour Experience - Repeated testing, research, and development with search engine algorithms The A-R-T being authority, relevance, and trust are the three pillars of SEO that determine ranking. Mastering this skill better than others is indeed an art and that is why SEO experts are called so. Search engine algorithms assess these Page16 three pillars of good SEO and provide a framework for the SEO experts to

19. Authority, Relevance, and Trust-The ART of SEO unfurl their skill and creative imagination. How to earn this? That’s what we’ll discuss in this SEO guide to authority, trust and relevance 1.What's the difference between SEO Authority, Relevance & Trust? The impeccable source credibility of any information provides authority. The relatability of content to the proper market niche is relevance. The constant upgrades and value provided builds trust 2.How does a search engine evaluate A-R-T? Above Image shows How Google Crawling, indexing and ranking websites. There are three phases to the way search engines approach the managing and ranking of websites and pages. In the first phase, robots, spiders, or web crawlers as they are differently known, crawl through the web to find all the information posted. The second phase is indexing the information collected by crawlers in the form of a web page copy stored in the data centre. In the third and final phase, the search engine spiders match the keywords to the information on their index to provide results. Algorithms rank the results in order of the relevance to the Page17 search term.

20. Authority, Relevance, and Trust-The ART of SEO These complex algorithms used by modern search engines find, read, and ascertain the topicality of webpages. They use hundreds of factors to evaluate their authority and relevance. Google updates its search algorithms hundreds of times annually that affect the rankings and organic website traffic. Keeping on top these updates only improves SEO strategies but also safeguards against penalties. Google has time and again proved its priority for user experience. In the same vein, an SEO campaign should not just focus on improving website ranks. Rather, it should be about making your website meet the demands of users. Therefore, building up on the three key principles of authority, relevance and trust are essential. 3.Authority in SEO: Do Domains, Pages and Links Matter? A qualitative measure for strengthening the overall visibility and ranking of a website, adding authority is a core tactic in SEO strategies. How do you do that? Simple. Informative content and links as external citation authority. Now, both Page Authority, a metric that predicts how well a web page ranks on the search engine result page, and Domain Authority, where ranking factors are based on the popularity, size and age of the domain, add authority to a website. Quality content always brings in link juice, and Google views linking as an endorsement. Thus, links pointing to pages are recognised as the best resources on the web for a given topic. With the advent ofGoogle PageRank, a Page18 system for evaluating which pages are the most important based on scoring

21. Authority, Relevance, and Trust-The ART of SEO the links they receive, a higher PageRank pointed to a higher position in the search results. This, however, is in principle only. How? Well, the continuous evolution of Google’s algorithms has surpassed the basic PageRank theory to evaluate links by intuiting their authority in turn. This brings us to the next principle of SEO as an A-R-T. 4.What is Relevance in SEO? When creating content, you should have in mind that your topic should be relevant to the search terms. Without this clear connection, relevance takes a hit and so does organic traffic. You can’t be talking about or linking to old cars if you are catering to the keyword ‘used bikes’. Google takes into account the contextual relevance of a citation flow and provides higher rankings based upon quality of links as opposed to the quantity of backlinks. It wants the best and most relevant answers for its users, if your site cannot provide it, it’s a bad signal to customers as well as Google’s algorithm. SEO needs to take a smarter look at relevance by achieving a correct and thorough understanding of the keyword-market connection. An optimisation based on an in-depth analysis of this will equal relevance thereby bringing in higher rankings. 5.Trust in SEO Calculating the trustworthiness of a website does not happen overnight, as it is Page19 in real life so it is in the virtual world. It takes time to build trust and SEO Brand

22. Authority, Relevance, and Trust-The ART of SEO Authority in the online community and in the mind of Google. However, there are certain trustworthiness factors from the search engine’s point of view. Page20

23. All about Tracking Google Algorithm Updates As of August 2020, the worldwide search engine market share across all platforms was dominated by Google at 92.05%. The web’s most dominant search engine reported a revenue earnings of 160.74 billion US dollars in the last fiscal year largely contributed by its advertising revenue. In short, Google is popular and makes a lot of money and a key reason behind all this is its focus on delivering the best results for each search and the best user experience possible. It is committed to providing the most authoritative and relevant results to people. Add to it, the rapid changes in marketing trends, emergence of new tools, and technology—all of which explains the regular tweaks on how Google treats rankings, links, and especially content. This is the reason why you should track Google updates. Now, there might be Page21 several questions popping in your head when we talk about tracking these

24. All about Tracking Google Algorithm Updates updates — how to monitor Google algorithm updates? How to get around Google's latest algorithm change? Are there any tools to track and monitor Google's algorithm updates? This article will address these questions and more. 1.What is Google Algorithm? A search engine algorithm is a complex mathematical instruction that dictates how to find, rank, and return the relevant search results. In the bid to improve its ability to return the exact answers in the quickest possible timeframe, Google began updating its algorithms. Google makes at least 500 to 1,000 algorithm updates annually. Most of these updates are minor and go unnoticed, some are glitch fixes, while still others are major quality updates that affect business rankings significantly. Some updates go on to attend legendary status due to their major impact on SERP— Page22 Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird, Pigeon, and Fred.

25. All about Tracking Google Algorithm Updates For instance, the Google Speed Update rolled out on July 2018 affected rankings based on page speed for mobile searches. Similarly, the October 2018 Significant Core Quality Update based on the expertise, authority, and trust or E-A-T factors dropped rankings for many websites as Google changed the way it measured its trust of a brand. 2.Why should you track and monitor Google's algorithm updates? Whether announced or unannounced, Google algorithm updates are always guaranteed to be good news for users. For businesses, it can be a mixed bag. This is the reason why tracking algorithm updates and optimising accordingly becomes very important. When it comes to SEO strategies and tactics, algorithm changes or updates are liable to affect, either positively or negatively, your: •Search ranking and visibility, •Organic traffic to website, •Lead conversions, •ROI and revenue generation. SEO experts understand that rather than a headache, this is a way the search engine giant is providing an opportunity to boost rankings of websites which are providing relevant content and best user experience. Keeping abreast of the quality updates, keeps you at the forefront of the SEO game. Google is the Tony Stark/ Iron Man of the internet, business sense and good vigilantism. On one hand, it wants the search results to be exact and make Page23 sense for users so that they are ahead of its competitors like Bing, Yahoo, etc.

26. All about Tracking Google Algorithm Updates On the other hand, spam sites and those that want to bypass security measures are heavily penalised too. 3.Benefits of tracking Google algorithm updates The digital livelihood of a website depends on its search positioning, conformity to Google’s changing standards means acing the rankings and in turn, site visitors and sales. So, •Churn out user-focussed experience, •Improve rankings based on quality content, •Get rewarded for fresh content, •Build on brand awareness and relevance. 4.How to track Google’s algorithm updates? Considering Google changes its algorithm on an average of once every day given its total yearly updates, it is impossible to keep track and deliberate on the implications of each for businesses. There are many resources that can help you to track updates. •Set up Google Alerts to monitor algorithm shifts and customise according to required keyword or phrases. •Listen to SEO industry leaders as they are sure to comment on significant or quality updates in Google’s algorithms. This can be done though: Following SEO blogs such as Google Webmaster Central Blog, Moz, Search Engine Land, SEM Post, etc. Following Twitter handles of thought leaders and influencers such as Rand Fishkin, Danny Sullivan, John Mueller, Barry Schwartz, Matt Cutts, Marie Page24 Haynes, and Glenn Gabe, to name a few.

27. All about Tracking Google Algorithm Updates Monitoring Google Analytics to understand the fluctuations website traffic and other metrics. Studied changes in conversions can alert you to possible algorithm changes. Tracking tools are also used by SEO professionals although Google doesn’t favour third party tools monitoring its algorithms. Still, they are a good alert system. Some of these are MozCast, SEMrush Sensor, RankRanger, Algoroo among many others. Google is always updating to be more assistive, better at matching user intent, and faster in responses. Staying alert is important to understand the big changes as they happen and change tactics accordingly. Below is the snapshot from SEMrush Sensor, which shows effect on Rankings due to change in Google’s Algorithm update. Page25

28. All about Tracking Google Algorithm Updates Page26

29. Top SEO Ranking Signals to Watch Out For in 2021 The groundwork for a successful SEO strategy must be laid in advance, at best, before the new fiscal year starts. A comprehensive and thorough SEO strategy requires an exhaustive panel of tactics that covers, not just keywords, but a keen implementation of all trends and updates. Google’s algorithm updates are the siren calls for all SEO professionals. While most are unannounced little tweaks that need due tracking, the ones that are announced, promise a lot of upheavals in the SERP. The current year has seen a lot of updates about changes in ranking signals like the Google’s Featured Snippets updates, in the heels of page loading speed of January 2018, and mobile optimisation of April 2015. 1.The 2021 horizon The latest announcement for the coming year includes the roll out of new SEO Page27 ranking signals. True to its vision, Google is gearing towards improving the overall experience consumers have on the web. The most familiar page ranking

30. Top SEO Ranking Signals to Watch Out For in 2021 signals currently in use towards evaluation are: mobile friendliness; safe browsing (zero malicious content, no social engineering); secure HTTPS; and intrusive interstitials. The detailed guidelines along with the announcement and the buffer time before the rollout commences, all point to the significant impact these ranking signals will trigger. There are many page ranking signals that will monopolise attention in the evolving world of SEO. Here are some of the most important ones to watch out for, if you want a well optimized site in 2021. a.Page Experience Now, a user’s experience with a web page will play a crucial role in determining page ranking. In other words, if the user’s interaction is poor, the page ranking will drop. This update solidifies the commitment of Google to display only high- quality links in its search results. Thus, from this search algorithm, better user experience of web page receives more weight. As site owners strive to offer a seamless experience, the audience engages more deeply and are happy to access the exact information they searched for. This ranking signal is based largely on the core web vitals update launched on May 2020. b.Core Web Vitals The Core Web Vitals metrics will not be incorporated until 2021, along with further metrics intended to integrate annually. It will be evaluated in conjunction with the existing page experience signals that are currently in use Page28 directly for rankings. High-quality content being the primary focus, Core Web

31. Top SEO Ranking Signals to Watch Out For in 2021 Vitals metrics will give you that sought after ranking edge after necessary improvements are made according to its focus areas. Below image shows the Google Light House Report. The three aspects of this focus are: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – Loading or ease of loading speed for a user First Input Delay (FID) – Interactivity or measure of the level of responsiveness of a page and response time for a user; Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – Visual Stability or expected layout shifts after clicking. The above figure shows these aspects. Which can be monitored in Google Light Page29 House, an SEO Tool by Google.

32. Top SEO Ranking Signals to Watch Out For in 2021 c.JavaScript JavaScript is the key behind your website’s dynamic and interactive content. That your JavaScript SEO is properly crawled and indexed should be tested. Google offers testing tools like Live Test URL and Rich Results Tester that help you check whether the JavaScript resources are loading properly. For instance, OG tags and Twitter cards are necessary for social media sites to process JavaScript properly. Besides, JavaScript Best Practices is a great place to understand how to better optimise this resource. Otherwise, you might end up with a lower page ranking signal as the client-side rendering would not come through and the page won’t load. This image shows JavaScript of website. d.Schema – Structured Mark-up Page30

33. Top SEO Ranking Signals to Watch Out For in 2021 Google is architecting SERPs to accommodate shorter answers, mainly in the form of Featured Snippets and Answer Boxes. Thus, schema mark-up as an evolving concept enhances the chances of appearing in these sections. It helps define the context of a query and simplifies page content for search engines, making it easier for search engines to identify the essential information on a website and rank the page better. Schema mark-up makes the all-important difference when title tags and descriptions are essentially the same, as in e- commerce sites. e.Branding with E-A-T The E-A-T initiative was a 2018 algorithm update, however, the importance of these ranking signals will be profound in 2021. Google will determine your brand strength through your own website, as well as through other website’s indication about your brand. Creating great content along with establishing the contributor’s expertise, recommendations and reviews of your high-quality content will all boost your brand strength. The expertise, authority, and trustworthiness associated with your brand will influence the rank your web pages receive in the search results. f.Voice Search The AI and the BERT algorithm introduced in late 2019, the growth of AI assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Cortana, and the fact that 72% of voice-activated device owners use it in their daily search routine point towards a new way— voice search. In terms of SEO this means that optimising for the way people ask questions, understanding local queries and intent, showing content for short Page31 answers like Featured Snippets are going to be important.

34. Top SEO Ranking Signals to Watch Out For in 2021 g.No more preference for AMP in news AMP was created by Google to allow for web pages that load almost instantly on mobile phones. They were technically hosted on Google’s website, loaded in less than one second, used fewer data, and were preferred in top rankings. Specifically pertaining to the news publications and media outlets, AMP pages were the only ones featured in Top Stories. This will no longer be the case with the page experience update as it will determine which content sits in the Top Stories section. Thus, even though AMP did help pages move faster, it’s no longer a requirement for top story eligibility. h.Tools you can use Google has also released certain tools that can be used to make sure that sites are optimised for these new ranking features. The Chrome User Experience Report, measures all page experience ranking signals and requires some amount of JavaScript knowledge to decode its extensive report. The other tool is PageSpeed Insights, to check site speeds, and finally, Search Console that will provide a core web vital report. 2.Improve your ranking signals readiness for 2021 Align your SEO goals with that of Google where all ranking signals are aimed at preferring pages that users love the most. Remember, ‘page’ experience over ‘website’ experience, so the algorithm will rank from a page-level basis. Professionals should be working towards a more comprehensive and Page32 sophisticated SEO strategy to optimise the user experience. Keeping in mind the 2021 updates in ranking signals will create utmost value.

35. Top SEO Ranking Signals to Watch Out For in 2021 Here are some components of page experience that businesses should focus on: •Revamping content strategy to provide relevant content •Keyword analysis for better focus •Seamless user experience across devices, especially being mobile- friendly •Improve page speed and reduce loading time, aim at website load time for both desktop and mobile to be under 3 seconds •Audit 400 errors, remove broken pages as they create negative experience hitting rankings •Safe browsing and security certificates to avoid being filtered out SERPs •Interactive content boosting audience engagement •Increase site authority and reputation •Eliminate popups and ads that disrupt page viewing, analyse usability issues in design 3.Conclusion Each new Core Update enables Google to understand and measure content quality signals. In the forthcoming web vitals update, page experience and performance are going to become more essential for ranking on page one. They will reward high-quality pages and penalise low-quality sites and spam. Ranking signals are Google’s way to ensure that a strong emphasis is being paid to user’s experience on your website. In fact, adhering to the updates and guidelines ensures that a positive, engaging experience has been built with the visitor. Page33

36. SEO Keyword Research: How to Do it Right? Many algorithm updates are rolled out, page ranking signals change, and SEO optimisation trends evolve, however, keyword research remains the first and most important part of an SEO strategy. Of course, matching keywords to search are not the only important ranking factor. 1.Why Keyword Research is Important Before everything, an SEO strategy requires to identify suitable high-volume search terms. It impacts every other SEO task like finding content topics, link building, on-page SEO, email outreach, and content promotion. In essence, keywords inform the direction of a content; it ensures that the content of a website is relevant and easily searchable on Google. Thus, keyword research is the activity of analysing search terms that will match with a business’ brand, product, or service to the keywords that the target audience uses. Following an adequate keyword research, a viable SEO strategy is crafted with a detailed plan of action to reach the specified goal. Page34

37. SEO Keyword Research: How to Do it Right? Keyword research shows what people are looking for, what is popular, what is getting a high volume of searches over a particular period of time. It helps to determine which strategic keywords should be targeted in the website’s content, and how to mould that content so that it satisfies both users and search engines. The clear benefits being: •Better understanding the target market •Insight into the exact words and phrases being used •Search criteria for a business’ content, services, or products 2.How Keyword Research Is Done? Online business and brand presence grows through search engine optimization. The skilful use of keywords continues to be important, only it needs to be fine-tuned to the way SEO works today. The phase of discovering keywords is the initiation and there are many keyword research tools that can help in this stage of keyword planning. 3.What are Keyword Research Tools? Tools make the keyword research process quite easier and structured too. Some of the highly recommended tools are, Google’s Keyword Planner, Exploding Topics, Keywords Everywhere, Ubersuggest, SEMrush, and Ahrefs Keyword Explorer. There will be seed keywords in mind pertaining to products, services, or other topics the website addresses. The keyword research tool can then discover average monthly search volume and similar keywords, common questions, and topics for the content. Based on search volume, tools also throw up high- and Page35

38. SEO Keyword Research: How to Do it Right? low-competition keywords. Prioritising keywords based on the advantage of competitiveness is another lesson learned through tools. However, a well laid out action plan includes a lot of steps which when done right can achieve the desired rank in SERPs. Don’t cut corners and begin with asking questions that will guide the keyword research. 4.Learn your niche and define goals Learning more about the topic of business helps discover angles to marketing and SEO strategy. Getting involved in your niche’s online communities, like forums and social media networks can help you find out the terms used when describing your brand, company, product or service. It also entails knowing the brand’s mission and goals. The keywords used should be aligned to them and form the basis of the framework of your top- level content and online marketing strategy. 5.Study your audience or user intent The effect of intent on keyword research is one of the most pivotal factors of ranking well on search engines like Google. Machine learning search algorithms now compare search terms with user queries to learn about search intent. Search intent means reason behind why people search for a specific term. Thus, knowing why your target audience is searching for something and what they intend to do after that is important. Studying your audience and then using keyword research to hone those insights will result in more successful campaigns than focusing on arbitrary keywords. Here, analysing keywords by region, season, etc. can also fine-tune optimising. Therefore, as the intent behind the search decides your ranking potential, your Page36 interpretation of the keywords is crucial. Simple keyword stuffing isn’t the

39. SEO Keyword Research: How to Do it Right? answer anymore. Targeted analysis of what Google rates higher can help you craft the type of content that you intend to create for a keyword. 6.Understand search volume The higher the search volume for a given keyword or keyword phrase, achieving higher rankings gets more difficult. This is known as keyword difficulty where SERP features like featured snippets, knowledge graph, carousels, etc. are saturating a keyword’s result page. When it comes to new websites targeting low-competition terms at first is a tactical move because there will be lesser sites to compete with. Provided the content is of stellar quality, this can bring organic traffic earlier than the high volume and more competitive keywords. However, a risk looms of going too low in search volume and receiving no traffic at all. This brings the next key point in keyword research, the advantage of targeting highly specific, lower competition search terms or long-tail keywords. Page37

40. SEO Keyword Research: How to Do it Right? 7.Hold the long tail Longer keyword phrases with three or more words, may be low in search volume but are quite specific in intent. That’s a win, right there! Keywords with high search volumes generally indicate ambiguous intent. Thus, it might draw traffic whose goals don't match your site or page content. It is easier to define and match the intent behind long tail keywords. They are more descriptive, better related to a brand’s sub-topics, attract more relevant audience, and deliver a higher conversion rate. 8.Check competitor rankings It is good SEO sense to prioritise high-volume keywords that your competitors are not currently ranking for and improve on the ones they are ranking good at. Whether you want to cash in on your competitor’s missed opportunities or go for aggressive strategizing of their best performance, understanding the balance of competition and realistic goals needs to be achieved. The goal is to shortlist keywords that provide a balance of quick wins but also gears you towards bigger, and more challenging SEO goals. 9. Learn the target of keywords—interest or intent Page38

41. SEO Keyword Research: How to Do it Right? The success factor in SEO keyword research is to ace the targeting of keywords that represent different levels of interest and intent. Some search terms are used when people are decided about making purchases, while others are used when they are still in the research stage. Keywords with brand terms targets visitors familiar with your brand names, they make fewer page views but have the best conversion rate. Keywords with product terms are for people who are yet to make a purchase decision. In this way, the pool of impressions gets larger as the target of keywords becomes diverse to include complementary product terms to general interest audience terms. 10. Prioritising keywords The game is not about ‘easy to rank for’ keywords rather for those with the highest return on investment. If the focus is only on low-difficulty keywords, it is a common SEO mistake made by most website owners. There should be a healthy balance among short, medium, and long-term ranking goals. Focussing on short-term goals means the opportunity to rank for the most lucrative keywords may never come. On the other hand, sole focus on medium and long-term goals will take years to attract any traffic. This is an important lesson to keep in mind while looking for keywords, analysing their metrics, and grouping them. 11. Wrapping it up So, here’s everything required to know and create a winning keyword strategy as a simple guide. These insights can aid in crafting a good content and SEO strategy, now that you have taken into account relevance, authority, and volume. Remember, all your content and marketing activities rely on a diligent Page39 keyword research so, always re-evaluate your keyword research periodically.

42. How to Communicate Your SEO Strategy in 2021 Have you ever been in a situation where your audience (read clients) are increasingly sporting a confused look as you outline your SEO campaign? 1.Challenge: Client executives have no tangible understanding of the SEO process SEO does not have an exact prescription on increasing visibility within search engines for every website. Add to it the multitude of SEO terms such as crawling, indexing, canonicals, redirects, 404s, mobile friendliness, etc. and it becomes apparent why it is difficult to explain how the SEO team is driving a positive ROI to someone who is not a subject matter expert. Second, in contrast to PPC where the return can be calculated on per ad spend, the long term goals of keyword integration towards sales conversion and lead generation feels like a marathon. Page40

43. How to Communicate Your SEO Strategy in 2021 2.Learn how to effectively communicate the significance of SEO The business impact of increasing keyword rankings, the value of driving more traffic to a website, and of increasing the number of website conversions is lost to C-suite folks who control the SEO budget. Hence, optimizing (pun intended) your communication skills and effectively explaining the SEO game can improve client relations and provide clarity. Here are some tips to communicate the importance of SEO and the reasoning behind your tactics and choices. Make your clients your allies in your 2021 SEO journey, rather than onlookers. 3.Understand their goals and set expectations Take the time to uncover your clients’ unique business and thoroughly understand their goals. Once you know what metrics matter the most to them, you can clearly communicate with them. Next, based on your research and their preference of success set expectations for results. Setting clear expectations lets the client know ‘when’ and ‘how much’ is to be attained. 4.Keep them in the loop and share news as it happens A part of the SEO strategy is to keep abreast of all updates. Why not share news and updates with the client as well? Let your client know that search engines are experimenting with a new and interesting format, and ask them if they would want to try it. It shows the client that you are on top of the industry trends, and also allows them to feel actively associated with new developments. Result, an excited and involved client in the know of SEO strategies. Page41

44. How to Communicate Your SEO Strategy in 2021 5.Avoid the industry jargon Every field has its own terminology that people outside the immediate industry feel disconnected with. Don’t make the mistake of assuming they understand the term and phrase basics. Take the time to educate your clients about SEO and define some of the key terms and metrics that will be used. Approach conversations with your clients after they are comfortable with the material and can keep up with strategy outlines. 6.Outline the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of your strategy Communicating the outline of your SEO channel-specific tactics in terms of what you're going to do, doing it, and then telling them that you did it keeps them aware and excited about prospects. Explain how it will help them to reach their business objectives, and solve their brand, business challenges. Much of SEO optimization is behind the scenes and is not tangible, therefore, it’s critical to explain the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of it. For instance, explain your plan of action prioritising featured snippets because it allows owning more of the SERPs and its potential to raise visibility. 7.Optimize your communication to suit the audience profile The way you present your SEO strategies should depend on the industry type of your clients. For instance, IT guys will appreciate the details of the technical work and bug fixes, etc. while the ones in marketing content marketing campaign tactics. However, remember that most client executives are interested in your impact to the bottom line. It pays to provide information focused on time and resources required, and the potential ROI. 8.Advantages of a progress report Page42

45. How to Communicate Your SEO Strategy in 2021 Documentation showing the improvement in search results can back up your efforts with tangible results. Sharing information like channel-specific KPI showing increased keyword rankings, increased site traffic, increased site conversions, etc. establish connection between your actions and the results. Monthly reports including measurable results, updates on completed tasks, and highlighting key wins creates transparency. Below image shows the Backlinks, Traffic Trend and Change in SERP features for a website in SEMrush Report. 9.Ask for feedback It’s a two-way street. Ask your clients to share opinions, suggestions, and thoughts on the strategies outlines. Their review of accomplished tactics can also clarify their expectations. In turn, it helps you to improve your SEO efforts as you determine the best approach based on their feedback. Healthy Page43 communication builds trust leading to longer and more profitable client relationships.

46. How to Communicate Your SEO Strategy in 2021 10.Acknowledge client suggestions Now that you have client feedback, at times you will find that your best practices strategies and their suggestions are at war. Turning them down is not only bad customer service but also detrimental to communication. On the other end, you don’t want to please them blindly. Solution? Acknowledge suggestions and guide them to the correct conclusions. 11.Build credibility for your SEO SEO involves a lot of work that happens behind the scenes and doesn’t often yield instant results. It can be difficult to prove the power of SEO to executives. Take leadership and proactively develop the SEO image within by being an authoritative source on industry resources. Document and monitor every effort that contributes to your client’s bottom line. Competitor comparison charts can also bolster support for your SEO campaigns. Clients don’t truly understand how SEO works but are aware of its necessity for their business’ digital livelihood. This makes them feel vulnerable as they mark the SEO budget. How should you bring them in the same page and earn their trust? Through the points discussed above that will bring about open and honest communication. Connect what you’re doing to the things that clients really care about. Ensure that the SEO strategy you deploy for your customers is current and holistic and more importantly, effectively communicate it to them. Your SEO efforts will soon find acceptance in the value pyramid of your client’s organisations. Page44

47. 10 Must-Have Elements to Effectively Optimize Your Content Online content is being consumed at a higher rate than before, the average online engagement among millennials stands at 11 hours per day. If you are looking to capitalise on that attention share, the content needs to be compelling enough along with functional site architecture. 1.Content still reigns as a key ranking factor Today, content needs to have a purpose and contribute towards it. Consumers are looking for and are attracted to content that benefits them. Once you identify a way to provide tangible value that your consumer wants, you can set about catering to those needs. 90% of successful content marketers are focused on providing information rather than making sales. And almost 82% of consumers have made purchase decisions based on the online content marketing of a company. Page45

48. 10 Must-Have Elements to Effectively Optimize Your Content 2.Importance of effective content optimization Optimization gets you higher rankings in search results, in turn affecting your organic traffic. This is how you get to serve your purpose of greater sales and revenue generation, brand exposure, and growing authority and reputation. Optimizing your content for users boosts your search rankings which is crucial for business success. Your site can be one of the four sites that 38% of buyers visit before making a purchase. Each piece of content in your pages is an opportunity to make a positive impression on a visitor. The visitor is then motivated to continue exploring, building a foundation of trust needed to turn them into customers. Content in place, another factor is user experience as web rankings are directly influenced by it. A whopping 45% visitors abandon sites that load and display poorly on their devices. Thus, optimisation of content to adapt across devices becomes a key SEO component. How should you ensure that you have effectively optimized your content for people and search engines? Here are the 10 must have elements that you need to get right for that. a.Quality Content The content should be new and unique, informative, and long enough to delve in-depth into the topic under discussion. The quality of content is pivotal to score SERP rankings, especially when 4 million new blog posts come online every day. When visitors enjoy the content in a web page, they end up spending more time, this metric is picked up by search engine algorithms to boost rankings. b.Target Keywords Page46

49. 10 Must-Have Elements to Effectively Optimize Your Content Create content in accordance to keywords so that they are read and can contribute towards page ranking. A good keyword research is the initial step in this regard. It is like spotting an opportunity of demand and creating content to fulfil that. Ideally, the keywords should be targeted in the first paragraph itself. Optimizing the keyword into URL, title, subheading, meta descriptions, and ALT tags or image title is also recommended. This guides search engines to understand the post and rank it accordingly. Furthermore, include semantically-related keywords to demonstrate relevancy. Ever since Panda and Hummingbird updates were released the obsession with keyword density has given way to using words or phrases that are semantically related and comes through when writing content naturally. c.Search Engine friendly URL Create URLs that your target audience wants to click on, with words rather than codes. This means that visitors can see, from the URL, what the content Page47

50. 10 Must-Have Elements to Effectively Optimize Your Content relates to. A clean structuring of URLs consists of avoiding complex and confusing codes, opting for shorter, keyword-optimized words. According to Google’s John Mueller, ‘when we have two URLs that have the same content, and we are trying to pick one to show in the search results, we will pick the shorter one.’ This is also evident in this Backlinko study which found that shorter URLs tended to have a slight ranking advantage over longer URLs. Besides, optimizing the canonical tag to the web page’s code helps search engines to prefer the original URL in rankings. A canonical URL is search engine friendly and is treated as authoritative. In addition, keep the URL short and include keywords so that both users and search engines are happy. d.Tag Optimization—Title, H1 and H2 One of the most important on-page SEO elements, an optimized title tag can start with your target keyword. Google’s title tag display currently maxes out at 600px, therefore, place keywords at the start of the title tags and limit it to 60 characters approx. Headline optimisation has to be attractive, because over 90% of website visitors who read your headline will also read your call-to- action copy. Similarly, target keyword and other important modifiers in the H1 and H2 tags. These are your headings and sub-headings contextually carrying Page48